Summertime Highlights

Alcazar of Seville. (Photo: Dorothy Nugent)

This summer, St. Agnes Academy students actively participated in many activities. I interviewed three students who mentioned their meaningful summer experiences.

Dorothy Nugent, a junior, attended the St. Agnes summer trip to Spain. Here, the students spent time with a host family, visited famous museums and monuments, and were overall immersed in the Spanish culture. Dorothy says her favorite part of the Spain trip “was getting to practice my Spanish in a real life setting. Having conversations was sometimes challenging, but everyone was understanding!”

Maddie Heno, a junior at St. Agnes, spent her summer touring colleges and participating in softball tournaments that would help her get seen by college scouts. One of the tournaments Maddie and her team played in had over 300 teams participate while two hundred college coaches came to watch. Although she cannot get committed until she is a senior, Maddie had six different schools come to watch her play.

Maddie’s softball team in Colorado. (Photo provided by Maddie Heno)

Maddie said “I was nervous about having the schools watch me play, but I look forward to going on more college visits and eventually committing somewhere!”

Aubrey Calaway, a rising junior, spent five weeks with Global Leadership Adventures (GLA). She spent three weeks of her summer in Dharamshala, a town known for its large number of Tibetan refugees in north India. Here, she worked in a day care center teaching English to young children. While volunteering here, she really got to know the children, teachers, and parents. Aubrey also spent two weeks in Thailand, staying in Chiang Mai and Raumitt. Here she learned about and took care of elephants. Bathing the elephants, she says, was one of the most magical experiences of her life. Aubrey learned basic Hindi, how to analyze the health of an elephant, and a lot about the culture in the places she visited.

Aubrey says, “I hope to educate people about the thousands of Indian children who have to walk miles to get to a poor school, the Tibetans who have been persecuted by the Chinese, and the abused elephants of the Thai tourism industry.” She is inspired to carry the message of the people she worked with back home.